Did player mutiny lead to Rangers firing John Tortorella

When asked what the reason why John Tortorella was fired as coach of the New York Rangers, GM Glen Sather didn't say much other than to say there wasn't any one particular thing. That's because he couldn't say the players told him to.
If there is any truth to the abundance of rumors circulating the day after the gruff coach was given the boot on Broadway, that seems to be what most precipitated the decision. One of those rumors/reports comes from Larry Brooks of the New York Post, saying things changed dramatically when Sather had his exit interviews with the players.

The Rangers players had had enough of the coach and they said so during their exit meetings on Monday. Sources have confirmed Sather had no intention of dismissing Tortorella in the wake of the team's second-round elimination by the Bruins until a critical mass of players informed the GM that the coach's overbearing personality had become a roadblock to success.
When Henrik Lundqvist told the press Monday he would need time to think about committing his future to the Rangers, that was the tip of the iceberg. The franchise goaltender did not sing an executioner's song, but we've learned that he was troubled enough by what had become a deteriorating dynamic between the coach and his teammates that he believed it was necessary to give voice to it.
We're told that though there were no ultimatums issued by the players, the overwhelming sentiment was that Tortorella had become the problem rather than the solution for the Rangers, who are now going on 20 years and 19 seasons since their last Stanley Cup in 1994.

Before you go thinking that this is just coming from some kind of ax that Brooks has to grind with Tortorella, two guys who had some verbal sparring matches over the years, it was pretty much echoed by Pat Leonard of New York's Daily News. Not to mention Elliotte Friedman of Hockey Night in Canada tweeted very soon after the firing that Lundqvist's comments "changed everything."
There is plenty of smoke to see the fire here.

Torts fired

Tortorella not the only problem in New York

Everybody sees the Tortorella in the media who is occasionally pleasant but most often surly and blunt. He apparently is pretty much the same guy behind the closed doors because the act definitely seems to have worn thin. Sather referred to coaches all having "shelf lives" in his comments on Wednesday, and that's certainly true for a guy like Tortorella, who is so demanding and rough around the edges. That eventually can get tiresome for the players.
Just to add a little more credence to the idea of Tortorella not being every player's favorite coach, here is a sampling of a few of his former players' thoughts after he was fired. That would be Marian Gaborik, who was treated like a scapegoat under Tortorella until he was traded to Columbus, and Matthew Barnaby, who played for him with Tampa Bay.

Tiger Woods is nearly 2,000 strokes under par in his PGA Tour career

Tiger Woods begins his 301st PGA Tour event Thursday at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village, three weeks after collecting his 78th career PGA Tour victory at The Players Championship, and the world No. 1 is tantalizingly close to yet another monumental milestone: 2,000 strokes under par. Using official stats from PGATour.com, we’ve compiled Tiger Woods’ career score to par in official PGA Tour events, and it’s low.

Woods first competed on tour at the 1992 Nissan Los Angeles Open, but he didn’t finish a calendar year under par until 1996. In the fall of the 1996 season, Woods won his first PGA Tournament, the Las Vegas Invitational, with a score of 27-under par. In Woods’ most dominant year to par, 2000, he won nine PGA Tour events — including three majors — and finished second four times.  In 2002, Woods finished every PGA Tour event he played in under par, a feat he has never replicated.

Woods is well under par in every one of golf’s four majors except the U.S. Open, where he has finished the tournament under par just three times in 17 attempts. In each of those three years — 2000, 2002, and 2008 — Woods won the tournament.

Prancercise’ Creator on Her ‘Wacky’ Workout and Being Too Famous to Prancercise

She’s aware that people think her exercise routine “Prancercise” is “goofy,” and that by extension its founder must be “spooky and goofy and weird and wacky. I say bring it on. I love it. Look at all the attention it’s getting me. If I wasn’t all those things, I wouldn’t be who I am.”

She also wouldn’t be an Internet sensation, which is something of an understatement. Since Rohrback recently revived the hilariously original aerobic routine she created in 1989 but shelved for more than two decades, the Coral Springs, Florida, woman has been bombarded with so many clicks at her website that it crashed Wednesday, and she’s scrambling to figure out how to add more server capacity. She can barely keep track of the interview requests galloping in. It’s such a big deal that its founder can’t find the time to prancercise.

“I didn’t even get to do it today, and I’m so upset about it,” Rohrback told The Daily Beast. “I can’t even do all the interviews. I’m going wacko.”

Wait, what’s prancercise? Have you been living in Pyongyang or something? It’s an exercise routine inspired by horses, featuring such moves as “the prancercise gallop” and “the prancercise box” as well as some incredible rhymes by its instructor and founder, Rohrback, decked out in a crisp salmon jacket and some very revealing white pants:

“We’re gonna really cut the noose and let it loose, with the prancercise gallop.”

And:

“It’s better to be punching into space than in your face.”

Joanna Rohrback demonstrates “prancercise” in a video on YouTube.

Back when the 61-year-old social worker invented the exercise routine, there was no Internet—at least not as we know it. There was just a woman in Hollywood walking down the street one day and inventing a whole new way to work out.

“I must have heard a really good song I liked on the radio,” Rohrback said. “I started moving in a rhythmic way, using ankle weights. And it just evolved.”

It felt like prancing, she said, like the way a happy horse frolics through a field of poppies. She was using her upper body and her legs, and because the whole thing was so fluid and natural, there was no pounding impact on the pavement. Prancercise was born, and it was beautiful.

Rohrback started prancercising outside, every day, on the “boardwalk” in Hollywood. People asked her about it constantly. “I think I even got it on a news clip,” she said. She quickly realized she shouldn’t keep prancercising to herself.

She made a video, but there was no YouTube to host it. So to be sure no one could ever steal the idea, she created a permanent record of her creation: “Funky Punky’s Prancercise Program.”

She filed it in the Library of Congress.

“Things were different back then,” she told The Daily Beast. “Prancercising was developed before Zumba came out. If I had had the investors and everything back then, prancercising would have been a huge hit.”

Then came “obstacles,” Rohrback said, including a “female condition” that sidelined her. She couldn’t prancercise for nine years. It was horrible.

“This book finally let me experience my inner horse. I was like a child again.”

Doctors said Rohrback needed surgery, but she knew the power to heal herself could only come from within. She cured herself, she said, with a strict regimen of natural herbs and diet.

In the meantime, she held down jobs as a social worker for the state of Florida and as a realtor. She founded the Vegetarian Advocate’s Group. She created a support group for people with food addictions, and another group of “Citizens for Democracy.” And she wrote a book: Prancercise: The Art of Physical and Spiritual Excellence, which was back then an unpublished manuscript.

Last July, for the first time in nearly a decade, Joanna Rohrback discovered that she could prance once more. She knew it was time to share her creation with the world.

“I wake up and here it is, 2012. Oh my god, I had never fulfilled my dream,” she said. “The top of my bucket list

One Fund concert lacked benefit of TV

“Healing in the Heartland,” a relief benefit concert Wednesday night starring Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, and Blake Shelton, raised more than $6 million to assist Oklahoma tornado victims.
“Boston Strong,” the benefit concert held Thursday night for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, and highlighted by appearances from Aerosmith, the J. Geils Band, New Kids on the Block, James Taylor, and Carole King, is projected to raise around $1.5 million, about one-quarter of the Oklahoma effort.
Two tragedies, two sold-out benefit concerts. One difference? Oklahoma’s was viewable on a live webstream and on NBC-TV, encouraging people watching at home to call in and make pledges. Boston’s was watchable only on a spotty webstream and could be heard only on SiriusXM Radio, and on Friday people used social media to voice outrage at not being able to see a concert benefiting victims of a local tragedy.
“Really irritating that #BostonStrong concert is not on television,” read a tweet from Suzanne Morse, one of many complaining voices on the subject.

Related

Photos

Boston Strong concert for the One Fund

• Video: Dane Cook criticized over live-stream request
• Boston Strong concert review: A night of joy, ovations

Don Law, president of Live Nation New England and the man who pulled the “Boston Strong” concert together, was widely hailed for organizing a major concert in only a few weeks, including lining up the artists, getting them hotel rooms, and securing TD Garden for no fee, all leading to a performance that received universal raves.

However, Law told the Globe on Friday, he could not get a TV station to underwrite the costs to broadcast it, which he estimated at $500,000. And after he lined up a major corporate sponsor to pay for televising it, the sponsor backed out at the last minute. Law declined to identify the sponsor.
“We were going to do it,” he said, noting that the broadcast would have raised more money through pledges from people watching it on TV.
At a news media conference Thursday before the event, Law said logistics were the main reason the event was not televised. He said configuring the arena to accommodate a TV production, from seating to lighting, is more complicated than a simple live stream on the Internet.
Whatever the reason Boston’s concert was not televised, it’s clear that Oklahoma’s concert, in the aftermath of a tornado that killed two dozen people and injured many more, benefited from the presence of Shelton. The country music star hosted the event, and because he is a coach on NBC’s “The Voice,” the network agreed to air the concert and put it on its cable channels, including G4, Bravo, E!, and CMT, either live or delayed.
Sam Weisman, a TV producer and director from Newton with no connection to the “Boston Strong” concert, said he thought the lighting and production quality for the event was impressive for such a fast turnaround, and it would have translated fine to television. He said other, more complicated reasons could have contributed to why it wasn’t televised.
“This merger of old media and new media is still happening,” said Weisman, who produces an a cappella reality show for NBC, “The Sing-Off.” “The language of commerce in this area is so all over the place. One of the new bits of commerce are these live events. And because they are one-offs it causes a gray area.”
That gray area often involves music rights, he said. A taped show has to clear the rights to show an artist’s music, Weisman said. While a live show is less constricted, it is still full of tricky questions about rights.
That issue could come into play for another reason. Law said Friday that Live Nation is exploring whether a DVD of the concert could be made and sold to collect more money for One Fund Boston, which has raised more than $37 million for victims of the April 15 bombings.
One local station, WBZ-TV, said the question about why the concert was not broadcast should be directed at Live Nation. “It’s a question the organizers of the concert will have to answer,” WBZ spokeswoman Ro Dooley Webster said. When told it’s the question a lot of people were asking on social media, she said: “We’d like an answer too.”
If the live webstream had worked more smoothly, it’s possible the backlash about the lack of a TV viewing might have been muted. During the concert itself, from the time it started around 7:15 p.m. until around 9 p.m., the live stream was sporadic, working one minute, crashing the next. It became more consistent around 9 p.m., when J. Geils was wrapping up its set, and for the final three hours it was mostly smoother.
But as of Friday afternoon, almost 24 hours after the concert, even the replay video of it on various websites was still problematic, often stopping barely five minutes into it during J. Geils’ performance of “Love Stinks

Australia vs West Indies Live Cricket Score, ICC Champions Trophy 2013 warm-up match

West Indies captain Dwayne Bravo won the toss and elected to bat in the ICC Champions Trophy 2013  warm-up match against Australia at Cardiff on Saturday.

For Michael Clarke’s team, the long tour of England begins with the first goal of conquering the Champions Trophy. The Aussies have a balance side going into the tournament. While spin department has been a concern, it is unlikely to hamper in the english conditions conducive to swing bowlers.

While West Indies won’t be considered as favourites to clinch the trophy, they have plenty of match-winners to trouble the opposition. Moreover, this tournament will be a new beginning for the team as all-rounder Dwayne Bravo will lead the Caribbean side after Darren Sammy stepped down.

Each team will have 11 players on the field. However, the captains have an option to use additional players from the 15-member squad.

Teams:

Australia: David Warner, Shane Watson, George Bailey, Michael Clarke (c), Phil Hughes, Adam Voges, Mathew Wade (wk), Nathan Coulter-Nile, Xavier Doherty, James Faulkner,  Mitchell Johnson, Clint McKay, Mitchel Marsh, Glen Maxwell, Mitchel Starc

West Indies: Chris Gayle, Dwayne Smith, Marlon Samuels, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Dwayne Bravo (c), Darren Bravo, Jhonson Charles,   Sunil Narine, Kieron Pollard, Denesh Ramdin (wk), Ravi Rampaul, Kemar Roach, Darren Sammy, Tino Best, Jason Holder

Akshay Kumar launches trailer of film `Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai Again`

New Delhi: Akshay Kumar recently unveiled the promo of his upcoming crime-drama flick ` Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai Again` in Mumbai.

The film sheds light on the underbelly of crime in the entertainment capital.

The 45-year-old actor will be playing a role of a villain for the very first time in his acting career, and he seemed very happy to break out of his hero image.

The movie, which will hit the theatres on 8th August 2013, is a sequel of 2010 hit ` Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai `.

ANI

Aishwarya Rai on Daughter Aaradhya:

Despite her seemingly endless obligation as an Indian star actress, Aishwarya Rai has shown true dedication to the parenting of her baby daughter, Aaradhya.
According to Bollywood, the doting 39-year-old mother reportedly dedicates two hours every day from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. to giving her baby her complete and undivided atteMom's care is apparently paying off, as the child is apparently intelligent. The baby girl now knows how to count from 1 to 10 and recite the complete alphabet as well. To top it off, the baby has even memorized the entire Gavatri Mantra.
The Indian media had captured the Bachchans when they landed at Mumbai airport, after their excursion into the United States for a holiday.
While father Abhishek Bachchan walked ahead of the pack, Rai held her 1-year-old baby girl.
For the first time, the infant's face was shown in full view as she confusingly glanced at the media frenzy happening in front of her.  Rai's parents pulled up and the actress' entire family quickly entered the vehicle.
Emirates 247 reported that her previous attempts at keeping her baby hidden were strictly to protect her from the photographers' bright flashbulbs.
"With my baby with me, it's instinctive.  If I see her getting startled or her eyes opening I protect her," she told the media